


The Five Redheads Clint Knew and the One that He Knows

by zombie_socks



Category: Hawkeye (Comics), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Bullying, Clint has a crappy past, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Sadness, mentions of blood/gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-22
Updated: 2015-01-22
Packaged: 2018-03-08 14:14:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3212159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zombie_socks/pseuds/zombie_socks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>a 5+1 of the redheads Clint had(s) in his life. </p><p>This turned much sadder that I intended. Sorry.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Five Redheads Clint Knew and the One that He Knows

The Five Redheads Clint Knew and the One that He Knows

 

  1. **Harold Barton**



He didn’t remember red hair so much as red skin. His father’s face was almost always red. Red with rage, red with anger. The red would blossom up from the alcohol drenched mouth and seep into his hairline, blending ruddy locks with crimson skin.

His own skin would blossom red, but not from whiskey or beer. His face held a red handprint and a sliver of split skin from where his father’s ring struck.

He’d remember seeing glass and blood in that red hair when the body was pulled from the car. Limp and dead weighted, his father’s red hair hardly seemed important after that night. He’d never think of it again.

  1. **Barney Barton**



He loved his brother. Had to. No one else was there to look after him in the orphanage.

Clint was small for his age – a doctor had muttered once that his growth might have been stunted from his father’s beatings – and the older kids took notice of that.

He was held down, being kicked by a dark-haired boy who was calling him mean names. He tasted copper in his mouth and it wasn’t the first time so he knew it was blood. It dripped down his nose too.

But then Barn was there, all flame-haired and freckle-faced. He shoved the older kids off of him and made sure they stayed down before offering a hand to his baby brother to help him up.

“You can’t let them get ya like that,” he berated as he wiped the blood from Clint’s face. “Ya gotta hit back. And don’t cry so damn much,” he added as Clint’s blue eyes began to water. Small and sensitive and Barney knew that would get the boy nowhere. So he trained him as best as he could, taught him to throw a punch and how to protect his ribs.

But it’s harder to protect ribs from arrows and years later one with purple fletching would embed itself into Barn’s side and the younger boy would watch as his savior died at his hands.

  1. **Tara**



She had no last name **.** Then again, not many in the circus did. He was sure that they had them at one point, but in amongst the tents and paint and flying colors, a last name didn’t seem important. After all, there were so many others one could be called.

He was The Amazing Hawkeye: World’s Greatest Marksman. And she was Tara the Magnificent. He’d watch her from the catwalk as she did her routine, an aerial number that had her flittering about on silks and ribbons flying in her hair. She was lithe and limber and breathtaking, copper hair twining around her neck and shoulders. It was the first time he’d ever felt that stir, that pull, in his gut and chest, making him want something he couldn’t name.

A bold sixteen-year-old, he asked her one night if she’d want to come with him to practice. She gave him a sympathetic look, and said maybe some other time. She left, clutching the arm of Balto, the strongman.

Three months later she was found dead in a ditch, lungs crushed, ribs broken. Balto was nowhere to be found.

Clint laid a red rose on her impromptu grave and wondered off-handedly if she even liked the color.  

  1. **Aron Cwiklinski**



The first time he was Aron’s name was on the embroidered nametag on his uniform. His mind tried to make sense of the letters, but couldn’t get any of them to make sense.

“It’s Polish,” the nineteen-year-old ginger offered one time as they patrolled the endless sands. “Swick-len-skee.”

“Swick-len-skee,” Clint echoed back. He liked Aron. The guy didn’t waste time beating around the bush. He was straight to the point and blunt, like a practice arrow. (The army wasn’t so bad, but Clint did miss his bow.)

“Dad was Polish. Mom was Welsh. Hence Aron with one A.”

Not that Clint would have known Aaron was spelled with two first letters; no one at the circus had been named that.

Aron was very open and personable. He didn’t like pineapple juice and would always trade Clint when he got a better flavor. Clint didn’t mind; to him all of the juice pouches tasted the same under oppressive desert heat.

They’d taken out a group of Taliban loyalists and were on their way back when Clint saw it.

“Aron, wait-”

But it was too late. The young man had already stepped on the mine and his weight shifted enough that it went off.

He’d later remember the bits of flesh and droplets of blood that covered everything. One guy lost his left leg to shrapnel. Clint lost some of his hearing. But what remained with him the most was the sight of deep, black, arterial blood speckled in a ginger buzz cut and covered in white sand.

 

  1. **Darlene Penelope Wright (Cherry)**



The second he saw her he knew he was in deep trouble. But maybe trouble was what he was looking for. 

And trouble he got.

Russian Tracksuit Mafia. Seriously? Who came up with that idea? And how was a bombshell cherry-redhead connected to them?

He took a hit to the head with a bat. Kate rescued his ass and together they saved the troublemaker. But she was back again like a bad penny, and he thought maybe that would be a better name for her.

She yelled at him about comics he didn’t immediately realize were about _her._ And what was with the safe?

Was it fun? Yeah. Did it last? Not even close.

Was it worth it?

He couldn’t answer.

 

  1. **_Natasha_**



It had always been her, will always be her. From that moment in Moscow when he decided to spare the redhead’s life he knew she would revolve around the centroid of his universe like the moon to the Earth. She would always be there, even if she was just a ghostly suggestion of a crescent in the blue sky.

He wasn’t sure when it was or how it happened but it was sort of like a switch being turned on. One second things were normal and next he realized he loved her.

It was terrifying and confusing and happened at probably the worst time. The sultry fox was seducing a target for a mission in Taipei and it dawned on him that he was jealous of the target. He was supposed to be watching her back, keeping a close eye on her six, but instead he found himself following her hands as they caressed the mark’s face and arms. God, how he wished her hands were on him instead.

And when the son of a bitch got fresh with the redhead, Clint nearly loosed the arrow he had notched.

He took a two-week sabbatical from SHIELD and crashed in his apartment, consuming cheep beer and stale pizza until she knocked on his door and asked him what the hell happened. He couldn’t tell her then. But she respected that and left saying she’d be back tomorrow to drag his ass back to a training room to get it into shape.

It was when he was hit in Brazil that he noticed she was acting strangely. And the kiss to his mouth to keep him awake and with her in that awful jungle suddenly had him realizing why.

It wasn’t so one-sided anymore.

They tried and tried again. On and off more than the automatic light switches in the break room.

Him with Bobbi and her with James and him with Jess and her with that guy she met in a bar and him with Cherry. But in the end they kept coming back to each other. They’d orbit and come back around to align once more. Maybe it was because they understood each other in a way no one else ever could. Maybe it was debt and ledgers that needed to be balanced. Maybe it was something more.

But it would always be Natasha.


End file.
